Hard-coal power station, Karlsruhe Rheinhafen, Germany

This new generation of high-tech coal-fired power stations with a gross output of approx. 900 MW will be constructed from 2008 to 2011. Iv’s Client “Alstom Power Systems GmBH” is the designer, who will have the construction executed for the German power supplier EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG.
The dimensions of the boiler house are relatively large, with a length x breadth x height of about 68x68x120 metres. The various installations, turbine and generator housing, chimney and cooling tower will also be constructed by other suppliers.

The core of the power station consists in general of a square boiler suspended in a very heavy and rigid boiler stand. A boiler house is constructed with a partial suspension from this stand, which will support the flue gas duct, all the equipment, pipelines, landings, staircases, etc.

Iv-Consult will design and carry out the calculations for the RDK 8 boiler house, wherein details of the main steel, secondary steel, and the most important connection details will be worked out. The profile database used consists of around 250 Korean and assembled cross-sections. The RDK 8 boiler house comprises a total of 6 walls, 35 floors, 6 staircases and various special suspension and support structures. The boiler house consists of around 50,000 elements. Each floor is again split-up into 8 sections and a variable number of assembly partitions. In total, there are more than 5,000 different loads acting in the x, y and z directions and occurring in around 70 different combinations and 40 load instances.

At night, the 3D Design model is automatically updated and exchanged with the client’s reference models of the pipelines and other equipment. The task is to match all the components to each other. In view of the large amount of information, many processes have been partially automated.
All the information that is received and administrated is put into separate Scia Engineer models. Due to the vast amount of members, the total size, the project approach and the schedule it is not possible to integrate all information into one model. For this purpose over 200 models have been built. The geometry from the 3D design model is used to make the models.

The Scia Engineer output data is filtered with the use of some programming in Visual Basic and transferred into the required output format and in various tables used for the connection design. Scia Engineer was also used to perform various earthquake analysis and Eigen frequency checks of structural parts and proved to be a useful tool.

Due to the vast amount of information within this project and a pre-described way of numbering the elements, combinations and load cases, the administrative flexibility within Scia Engineer was highly appreciated.

In general Scia Engineer proofed to be a useful tool for designing power plant structures in a systematic way. The work was commenced in July 2007 and taking into account all the additional improving revisions, it is expected to continue to around June 2009.